I’ve seen some egos and struggles lately.  Egos – folks refusing to scale to what is appropriate for their current strength and technique.  Struggles – fighting the barbell unsafely in a wod to get what they hope won’t be a no rep or resting so long in a wod to manage a rep it defeats the purpose (since it’s a wod and not a strength portion)

Below is an article Crossfit has published.  The basic take away I have for you is the equation:

Power (average) = Force x Distance / Time

Scale your weight & listen to your coach when you’re told to scale it.  Your goal is a higher power output.  Doing less than RX, but moving quicker is going to generate that higher power.  I’m not saying go light either, the weight you use should be a challenge, yet sustainable for the WOD.  Yes, competition is great, but self-awareness is also key for growth too.

-Coach Sarah

“Valid criticisms of a fitness program need to speak to measurable, observable, repeatable data. If an alternative to CrossFit is worthy of our consideration it ought to be presented in terms of distance, time, load, velocity, work and power related to movements, skills, and drills. Give me performance data. CrossFit can be scientifically and logically evaluated only on these terms.” -Coach Glassman

Originally published in February 2009

In this two part lecture, Coach Glassman defines fitness and health. This lecture is the first time CrossFit published a definition for health. It is as a three-dimensional model that measures fitness across age and has the potential to both redefine and unite the health and fitness fields forever.

Science is about measurement and prediction. Without measurable, observable, repeatable data concerning the fundamental physical units of kinematics (mass, distance, and time), there is no science of human performance. But physical output can be measured (e.g., foot-pounds/ minute): we move our own bodies and external objects, we can measure how heavy those bodies and objects are, how far they travel, and how long it takes.

Power (average) = Force x Distance / Time.

Your ability to move large loads, long distances, quickly, in the broadest variety of domains is fitness. Fitness is defined as work capacity across broad time and modal domains, and health is defined as work capacity across broad time and modal domains throughout life. It is fitness across one’s age.

CrossFit’s prescription for achieving this fitness is constantly varied high-intensity functional movements. We can accurately predict improvements in work capacity across broad time, modal, and age domains through this prescription. We have tens of thousands of examples at this point.

In Video 1, Coach covers the first three models of fitness originally published in the 2002 “What is Fitness?” article, and how they support CrossFit’s definition of fitness (Figure 1).

Video 1 (20 min)

http://journal.crossfit.com/2009/02/crossfits-new-definition-of-fitness-volume-under-the-curve-1.tpl

In Video 2, Coach Glassman explains the fourth model, the Sickness-Wellness-Fitness Continuum, and how that becomes subordinate to the metric of maximizing the volume of work capacity across broad time and modal domains throughout your life.

The new component introduced in this lecture is age. Fitness can be graphed in two-dimensions with duration of effort (time) on the x-axis and power on the y-axis. At each duration, we average your power output across a variety of modal domains (skills and drills). This creates a power curve, the area under which is your work capacity across broad time and modal domains (your “fitness”).

We can now add a third dimension to this graph, the z-axis, which is age. By reassessing your two-dimensional fitness at various times throughout your life, we graph the form of a solid. The power curve takes on the shape of a plateau or blanket (Figure 2). This three-dimensional graph is a defining measure of health. Health, therefore, is nothing other than sustained fitness.

Video 2 (18 min)

http://journal.crossfit.com/2009/02/crossfits-new-definition-of-fitness-volume-under-the-curve-2.tpl